open-escpos-print-service

This is an Android app that provides a PrintService for label and receipt printers.

It supports ESC/POS printers like the Netum G5 or MTP-II. It also supports Citizen printers using the CPCL protocol.

You can connect printers through Bluetooth or a TCP socket.

How

• Install the app;
• enable Bluetooth;
• pair your Bluetooth printers with your phone;
• open the app;
• the Bluetooth printers should be there, configure the paper size;
• for TCP printers, just add an address and a port separated by a “:” and configure the paper size;
• you should now be able to print from any Android app (Chromium, image gallery, etc…).

Using through an intent

If you need to print from an app that does not support printing (Firefox for Android for example) or without going through the Android printer selection screen, you can send an intent to this app with the folowwing format:

• scheme: print-intent
• S.content: a base64 encoded gzipped JSON array of strings, each string is an HTML document.

It looks like this: intent://#Intent;scheme=print-intent;S.content=H4sIAAAAAAAA...XXXXX;end

Details

If you have an ESC/POS label printer, enable the Cut after each page switch, this will make the printer go to the start of the next label (at least on the Netum ones). There are speed limits and delays that you can set in each printer settings; if your printer works well, leave these at 0.

TODO

Some things are not implemented yet:

• a document print queue;
• discovery of network printers through mDNS.

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